Nonlinear hydrotectonic phenomena: Part I - fluid flow in open fractures under dynamical stress loading. Special report No. 12
A fractured solid under stress loading (or unloading) can be viewed as behaving macroscopically as a medium with internal, hidden, degrees of freedom, wherein changes in fracture geometry (i.e. opening, closing and extension) and flow of fluid and gas within fractures will produce major changes in stresses and strains within the solid. Likewise, the flow process within fractures will be strongly coupled to deformation within the solid through boundary conditions on the fracture surfaces. The effects in the solid can, in part, be phenomenologically represented as inelastic or plastic processes in the macroscopic view. However, there are clearly phenomena associated with fracture growth and open fracture fluid flows that produce effects that can not be described using ordinary inelastic phenomenology. This is evident from the fact that a variety of energy release phenomena can occur, including seismic emissions of previously stored strain energy due to fracture growth, release of dissolved gas from fluids in the fractures resulting in enhanced buoyancy and subsequent energetic flows of gas and fluids through the fracture system which can produce rapid extension of old fractures and the creation of new ones. Additionally, the flows will be modulated by the opening and closing of fractures due to deformation in the solid, so that the flow process is strongly coupled to dynamical processes in the surrounding solid matrix, some of which are induced by the flow itself. In studying such highly interactive, non-linear fluid-gas-solid systems, and attempting to quantitatively describe them with some degree of generality and accuracy, one approach is to first break down this complicated non-linear problem into its basic elemental parts. Here the idea would be to solve component problems in sufficient generality so that they can be combined together in a way that allows the complete interactive phenomena to be represented, at least in some well defined degree of approximation.
- Research Organization:
- Technology and Resource Assessment Corp., Boulder, CO (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG08-85NV10461
- OSTI ID:
- 196550
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/NV/10461-T68; ON: DE96006612; TRN: 96:001822
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: Sep 1993
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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